


deck the halls

by thecaryatid



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Decorations, Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, also featuring lorenz as HOA head, felix fraldarius has decided to win at christmas, homeowner's associations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28070259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecaryatid/pseuds/thecaryatid
Summary: Felix is determined to have the best Christmas lights in the neighborhood, one-upping their neighbors and sticking it to his mortal enemies: the HOA. Can he win the coveted award for "most Christmas spirit", give Sylvain the Christmas of his dreams, and discover the true meaning of Christmas?
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 15
Kudos: 101
Collections: Sylvix Advent Calendar





	deck the halls

_Four months until Christmas_

There was a knock at the door. 

Felix peered through the window. The head of the HOA stood impatiently on their front steps. 

“What the fuck. We paid our dues last month,” Felix said. 

“We always do. Pretty sure we’re the most regular at it,” Sylvain said, reluctantly opening the door. 

The HOA head gave a strained social smile. 

“Hey, Lorenz. Can we help you with anything?” Sylvain pasted on an equally fake but much brighter smile. 

Felix fidgeted with the blinds and listened as the HOA head gestured toward the perfectly serviceable secondhand 2010 Corolla parked in their driveway. Apparently that was some sort of problem. Apparently their car wasn’t _classy enough_ to be _displayed in their driveway_. Apparently it was going to _bring down property prices, I’ve had so many complaints, really I should have fined you but you’re such thoughtful neighbors, always so good about everything, I’m bending the rules to give you this warning_. 

Sylvain nodded along and ushered him out with a lukewarm assurances that _of course we didn’t mean to upset anyone, if the neighbors don’t like it,_ fading into the distance as he walked the HOA head back to the end of the driveway. 

“What the _fuck_ ,” Felix said as Sylvain came back. 

“Didn’t you hear?” Sylvain said with his most pissed-off, brittle grin. “Our car isn’t _classy_ enough.” 

* * *

_Three months until Christmas_

Nuisance the cat was bored. Their last house had a beautiful catio Felix built with his own hands, and Nuisance had spent her afternoons staring at birds visiting the bird feeder, tail twitching. Felix didn’t care about the birds, but Nuisance enjoyed watching them, so he filled the feeder every other morning. 

The new house didn’t have a catio. Even with her deluxe cat tree and piles of toys, Nuisance was miserable stuck inside all the time. So Felix planned a tiny home improvement project. He spent one sunny afternoon scrambling around the porch, hammering together a wood frame, securing wire mesh and double-checking it for cat-sized gaps. They owned the house, after all, and the catio didn’t extend into any common areas. It was safe from the HOA’s overzealous rule enforcement. 

Felix nearly splintered the railing when Lorenz stepped into the backyard, eyes gleaming in judgement. 

“I don’t recall seeing a home improvement application for this address,” Lorenz said. 

“The regulations don’t require approval of unobtrusive changes that only affect your own building.” Felix had looked it up. Nothing could get in the way of Nuisance’s perfect catio. 

“That only applies if the changes aren’t visible from the street.” 

Felix looked around. The porch was in the backyard, with bushes carefully trimmed to HOA specifications shielding it from view. Nothing was visible from the street. But Lorenz gestured over his shoulder to where the road looped around in the distance. 

“No one can see it from there,” Felix snapped. 

“Well, I certainly noticed your activities from the road. And if I could see it, other people can as well.” 

Felix’s fingers clenched around the hammer. He pictured punching that fucker in the face, and then pictured the aftermath of punching that fucker in the face — _local homeowner assaults HOA head in dispute over home modifications_. He counted to ten. 

Lorenz turned with a cheery little wave. “I’ll expect you to undo this work and submit a proper application,” he called as he left the yard. 

* * *

_Two months until Christmas_

Halloween brought the usual crop of gaudy, overpriced decorations. Felix had grown to appreciate Halloween; it was the only time of year when skeletons and fake blood were acceptable accessories. But he didn’t even have to open the _appropriate lawn decorations_ section of their HOA manual to know that Lorenz and his cronies wouldn’t approve anything flashier than a jack-o-lantern. 

Sylvain found him slumped uncharacteristically in front of his laptop, scrolling endless social media feeds of everyone else’s Halloween decorations. His friends had front yards filled with ghosts and graveyards and enormous, glowy-eyed skeletons. 

“I know, babe,” Sylvain said, awkwardly hugging Felix from behind. 

“This house was a mistake.” Felix glared at Mercedes’s perfect Instagram pic, posing in her witch costume in front of her monster menagerie.

Sylvain didn’t argue. “I guess it’s the price of owning a nice house in the suburbs.” 

The price was not worth it. The price made Felix miss his hour-long commute and their cheaper, smaller, DIY-nightmare house with its weed-infested yard and lack of HOA oversight. 

* * *

_One month until Christmas_

“Hey, so did you hear what the HOA’s doing now?” Sylvain said with his stupid shit-eating grin. Felix had not heard. Felix deleted the HOA email newsletter as soon as he got it. “They’re running a Christmas decorating contest. I bet Lorenz is angling to get featured in some article about how _nice_ and _quaint_ his little neighborhood is.” 

Felix did not care. Christmas decorations were the most boring seasonal decoration. 

“And, yeah, you don’t give a shit about Christmas or whatever, but get this: the HOA’s waiving all of the normal restrictions about decorations being too bright and intrusive. As long as they’re seasonal, it’s fair game.”

And, suddenly, Felix cared. He pictured the HOA head’s judgemental frown, the suppressed glee in his eyes as he showed up, insidious as any spy, to ruin every good thing in Felix’s life. 

The HOA newsletter still sat in his deleted folder; Felix dug it out to check the contest rules. Lights still had to be turned off at 10 pm sharp, there waas the usual boilerplate about no profanity, but every other rule was waived. _Every other rule_. As Felix read through the categories—most elegant, best winter wonderland, most Christmas spirit—visions of light-up reindeer danced in his head. Suddenly, he cared very much about Christmas decorations. 

“We’re going to make Lorenz regret every pointless rule he’s ever enforced,” Felix said. 

“Oh, yeah. I’m way ahead of you, babe. We’re going to fuck that dude up with Christmas cheer.” Sylvain kissed his cheek. “And, hey, Home Depot’s having some big sale right now.”

* * *

Home Depot was crowded with people and with tacky, disgusting Christmas decorations. 

“How many of those do you think they sell?” Sylvain pointed up at the twelve-foot light-up snowman towering over the front entrance. 

“None. Who likes Christmas enough to spend that much on a snowman?” Felix grimaced at the price tag. 

“I dunno, I kinda get it. You know, going all-out on a holiday, getting the most ridiculous things you can think of. Like those giant skeletons everyone had for Halloween, right?” 

At the mention of the giant skeleton, the giant skeleton that half of his friends had displayed in their front yards, Felix ground his teeth together. Fine. Sylvain might have a point. 

Sylvain shifted from foot to foot, like he did when he realized how important something was, smile fading. “You know, leaning into the tacky sounds nice. My family always had these Christmas lights that were way over-the-top and totally cold at the same time, like the neighborhood would disapprove if they showed too much enthusiasm. I’d enjoy some tacky decorations.” 

_I’d enjoy some tacky decorations_. True, the HOA nixed their Halloween plans, and they’d never decorated for Christmas before. 

Felix pictured a huge home with a thousand tasteful lights framing the windows, star-bright and ice-cold, in colors that matched the siding. Presents wrapped in subdued green-and-gold paper piled under a tree with no tinsel or souvenir ornaments or misshapen clay stars made by children who would later loathe seeing them every year. No enthusiasm, just a perfect dusting of fake snow and a perfect array of silver baubles and a perfect string of perfectly-positioned lights. And Sylvain, among all of it, modulating his smile from wide and unashamed to dimmed perfection. 

Well, fuck that. He'd make Sylvain the biggest, best Christmas light display. No one was allowed to out-enthusiasm Felix's Christmas lights.

"Take this." Felix shoved the cart handle into Sylvain's hands and strode off into the depths of the seasonal aisles, picking up anything that caught his eye. Blinking multi-colored lights, silver stars, a christmas tree. Gingerbread houses, a whole armload of silver-lattice snowmen and the most elaborate Santa Claus he could find. 

Sylvain followed along, raising an eyebrow at every new thing Felix tossed in the cart. "How much stuff are you going to get? We have enough to piss off the HOA and draw a crowd already." 

The cart was full, the last few items balanced precariously on a tower of boxed lights. "It looks like more than it is," Felix said. It did not look like more than it was. 

"You don't like to do things halfway, but we've got way more than we need to make Lorenz regret every bullshit rule he's ever enforced." Sylvain drummed his fingers on the box for the collapsible snowman, the tackiest Felix could find. It didn't just light up; the box claimed it blinked in several colors.

"I don't just intend to piss him off. We’re going to do far more than piss off the HOA and win the decorating contest." Felix stared at the shelves. How many wreaths did they need? Should they get real ones or fake? “I will make up for every stupid, proper, stifling Christmas you had as a kid.”

“Hey, what?” 

Felix turned. He took Sylvain’s hands, stared up into his eyes. “I’ll do everything. I’ll fill our home with all the Christmas cheer you should have had.”

Sylvain snatched at him, pulling Felix awkwardly closer between the shelves and the shopping cart. "Babe. Babe, you really don't have to. But I can't wait to watch you spend all your weekends getting pissed off detangling lights." 

The pile of lights looked bigger on the living room floor. That was, now that he laid them all out, a lot of lights. Sylvain whistled. "It's a good thing we have a basement, there's no way we'd fit all of that in the closets."

Well, he needed to start somewhere. A pile of Christmas lights was no match for him. Felix picked something at random, ripped the box open, and yanked out the first coil of lights. 

He opened the next box, and the next, and the next, tossing the packaging into one mountainous pile of cardboard and plastic that contained a year's worth of pollutants. Methodically, he laid out the different decorations in smaller, neater piles: blinking lights here, non-blinking lights there, statues and inflatables tossed onto the couch. He even saved the instructions. Felix usually lived his life by ignored the instructions, but this wasn't just for him. This was for Sylvain's perfect Christmas, and for revenge against the HOA. Everything had to be perfect. 

"So you want some help with that, or what?" Sylvain wandered in, mugs of hot chocolate in hand. 

"No. Everything is going fine." It _was_. He'd known just the unboxing-and-organizing stage would take a couple hours. 

"Riiiiight," Sylvain said, slowly and with only a little judgement. "Not that I doubt you, but we'll need the living room back eventually." 

It was unusable. The chairs were strewn with styrofoam chunks. "The decorations are going in the basement once I get them organized and untangled. The boxes are going to recycling. Everything is going fine." 

Sylvain made a quizzical, unconvinced hmm noise. He ducked and laughed when Felix tossed a chunk of styrofoam at his head. 

"Fine, fine. I'll just be your moral support." Sylvain gingerly pushed piles of trash off a chair and sat down. "I've gotta enjoy having my beautiful, wonderful husband doing all this work for me, right?" 

"You do. It's a requirement." Felix ripped one last light-up reindeer out of its box and tossed the packaging into one of the piles. Step one, unpacking: completed. 

Step two: bag up all the garbage before Sylvain had an aneurysm at the mess. 

A couple hours and innumerable cardboardcuts later, the pile of rubbish was gone. Sunset was hours in the past already. He’d finished his hot chocolate, and then another mug of hot chocolate, and then a plate of nachos, all while surrounded by cardboard on the living room floor. The HOA and Lorenz’s insufferable smile were still Felix’s greatest enemy, but cardboard? Particularly the thin sort of cardboard that sliced through skin like it was nothing? That was a distant second. 

"Dunno if I would have suggested this if I'd realized it would be so _dangerous._ " Sylvain chuckled as he went through half a pack of bandaids, bandaging each of Felix's cardboard cuts with greatest care. "Look, you're wounded! The decorations attacked you. You know you don't have to go through all this just for me." 

Felix pulled his hand away. He did not actually need that many band aids. "Stop that. I don't need your help." 

Sylvain grabbed his hand back. Apparently Felix couldn't escape so easily. "Yeah? Okay, babe. I'll just sit back and relax while you struggle. Hey, that sounds pretty nice! I'm your devilishly handsome moral support, cheering you on and bringing you endless hot chocolate refills."

He could accept that. "Good. I'll handle everything." 

"Yeah, I bet you will. Come on though, you need to give it a rest for the night." 

"The living room is still covered in lights." Felix slumped forward against Sylvain’s chest, the day’s exertion catching up to him. 

Sylvain sighed dramatically. "I guess I'll just have to live with it this one time. See how much I love you? I'm letting my living room floor be a mess for this." 

Felix kicked him. "I appreciate your sacrifice." 

"You better. Now come _on,_ they'll still be here tomorrow." Sylvain stood up and tugged Felix off the couch, stepping gingerly around piles of glass and plastic ornaments. "You don't want to pay more attention to the Christmas lights than you're paying to me, do you?" 

Morning came. The Christmas decorations loomed. Had it really taken up so much space yesterday? Had it sprawled across the floor with such disregard for order? 

"After breakfast," Sylvain said. He dragged them off to the kitchen for french toast, as befitted a lazy sunday morning in. 

Felix wolfed it down, and then went to face his current enemy, the miniboss on the way to the final battle: the pile of lights. 

The lights got tangled. They didn't just get tangled with themselves, they got tangled with each other, twisted around chair legs. Perhaps Christmas was a mistake. Could anything be worth the sheer number of hours he'd apparently have to spend detangling lights? But no. He had a purpose here. Two purposes, one to wipe the smile off the face of every member of the HOA board, and one to give Sylvain the most ridiculous Christmas he could. A mere pile of lights, twisted, dead things of glass and plastic, wouldn't defeat him. 

Felix paused to take a deep, steadying breath. For once in his life he cast an evaluating eye over his surroundings, making a plan rather than charging forward on instinct. He could do this; for Sylvain, he could do this. 

It took all afternoon. Freakishly-early sunset started casting shadows into the living room, taking away the bright, natural light Felix had relied on, but it didn't matter. By the time the light disappeared completely, Felix was sprawled across Sylvain's lap in the biggest, plushest armchair, methodically working at the last bundle of lights while Sylvain distracted him, combing his fingers through Felix’s ponytail and resting his other hand lazily on Felix’s waist. 

No thanks to Sylvain, the decorations get packed away in boxes. Felix labelled them. Sylvain grabbed at him when he got out the labelmaker for the first time ever, catching Felix around his waist and kissing down his neck. "Aww Felix, you're learning to _organize_ for me?" 

Felix grunted. 

Sylvain did it again when he pulled up a spreadsheet on his laptop. "Are you cataloguing things?" 

"I need to plan," Felix explained. They had so many lights. They were going to have an unforgettable lights display. He wasn't going to half-ass this thing; he needed to plan out every square foot of the yard. 

"Babe. You're using a _spreadsheet_ for me." Was Sylvain tearing up? He couldn't possibly be getting emotional about spreadsheets. 

Felix checked over his shoulder. Sylvain was, yeah, tearing up. Fuck. 

* * *

The first day of the HOA-approved Christmas season finally rolled around, and the basement of boxed decorations and Felix's many beautiful spreadsheets had long been ready. 

Around them, every neighbor was spending the bright, cold Sunday decorating. The couple next door, with their perfectly-maintained vintage cars and oddly contrasting personalities, started earliest. Felix and Sylvain were woken in the too-early morning by Ferdinand's jovial yells echoing over the neighborhood. 

Felix groaned. He was awake, even though it was his customary day off and the sun wasn't up. Sylvain shifted sleepily next to him, cuddling closer, burying his face in Felix's neck. 

"'s too early," he mumbled. 

It wasn’t that early, except it was a Sunday, and Sunday was usually when Sylvain makes them too much brunch after a long morning in bed. 

"I'm getting up." Their decorations were going to start off with a facade of cheerful compliance. He might as well join the early-rising neighborhood in celebrating their first official day of Christmas cheer, put the HOA off guard. 

"you're getting up too," Felix said as Sylvain wordlessly, pathetically whined, wrapping his arms tighter across Felix's chest. 

"It's _Sunday_." He opened one eye wide enough to look up soulfully. The sleepy blinking and the sleep gunk in his eyes did not enhance the effect. 

"It's the first day of decorating season." 

Sylvain moaned again. He kissed along Felix's neck, hopefully, waiting for acknowledgement. Felix pried his arms from where they were wrapped around his ribcage and shoved Sylvain away. 

"You're so cruel," Sylvain whined. He was doing a lot of whining. "I'll just. Stay here." 

"I need you to hold the ladder." 

"Feeeelix. The one time I didn't offer to help is the one time you need me? Really? _Really_?" 

"It is. Unless you'd prefer me to fall and break my neck putting lights up." The blankets were still wrapped around Sylvain; Felix grabbed at the edge and pulled, slowly but surely dragging them out of Sylvain's still-tired grasp. 

"Noooooo," Sylvain groaned, but he finally rolled out of bed, stubbing his toe on the bedside table. About time. 

Breakfast was shitty coffee and shittier toaster waffles. Breakfast wasn't followed by the traditional Sunday morning long shower, or the traditional Sunday morning making out on the couch for three hours, or the traditional Sunday morning getting drunk way too early and spending the rest of the day giggling and falling over each other and eventually crawling back into bed. 

Felix grabbed the ladder and took it outside, along with the top five boxes of decorations, the most proper and socially-acceptable light blue strings of lights. Muttering about cruelty and terrible Sunday surprises, rubbing his shadowed eyes, Sylvain still followed after him. 

"Ah, hello there! I hope that our early-morning activity did not unduly disturb you," their always-loud and obnoxiously-friendly neighbor Ferdinand called down from his perch on his own ladder. Lights already ringed his roof, large, ostentatious ones that looked like a hundred victorian Christmas tree candles. 

"Don't worry. We were already awake," Felix said. They had not already been awake. "We couldn't miss the official first day of Christmas decorating." He planned to take advantage of all the decorating time leading up to the HOA holiday decorations contest.

He leaned the ladder against the side of the house. He picked up the first box of lights. He stepped up onto the ladder, balancing the lights precariously. The ladder was perfectly sturdy. This was fine. 

"So are you still doing the thing where you’re doing everything or what," Sylvain said. 

Felix ignored him. It was fine. He pulled the first strand of lights out of the box. He clipped them onto the eaves. It was fine; everything is fine. 

"Like, if you aren't asking for help, what do you actually need me here for?" Sylvain leaned up against the wall below him. He grinned like an asshole. 

"Nothing." 

"It's okay, you can admit you need the moral support. I'm so supportive, Felix, you need me." 

"Fine. Steady me." The ladder could could be steadier, fine. Sylvain could make himself useful, fine. 

Sylvain chuckled. He seemed much more awake now and, like an asshole, he did hold the ladder but he also did reach up and "steady" Felix by grabbing his ass, providing that tiniest bit of completely-unnecessary support. 

"You can't wait an hour?" Felix snapped over his shoulder. 

"I'm only human, babe. How am I supposed to resist when you're right here?"

Felix didn't dignify that with a response. He stepped up a couple more rungs until he was safely out of Sylvain's grabbing range. 

The morning wore on. Felix downed his second and third cups of coffee between rounds of securing lights to the roof, lining the eaves. All across the neighborhood, other residents of their little hamlet did the same, shouting out greetings and even delivering plates of cookies. 

Their house looked appropriately festive for two weeks. Perfectly appropriate, attracting admiring coos from neighbors and even a few compliments from Lorenz, who dropped by to tell them how lovely and understated their decorations were. 

“I am so proud to have residents such as you as part of our beautiful community,” Lorenz said during one of his uninvited visits, while Felix put the finishing touches on the delicate snowflakes hanging from their maple tree. “The taste you’ve shown with your decorating sensibilities is simply impeccable. You will join the Christmas decorating contest, won’t you?” Lorenz lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I imagine you’ll be a front runner for _most elegant lights display_. The prize for all of our awards, as I’m sure you know, is a fondue kit and a $50 gift certificate to the Olive Garden.” 

“I wouldn’t dream of disappointing you,” Felix said. He’d bide his time until the night before judging began, when the rest of the display would go up, all of the hideous decorations, already sorted out in the basement and ready to be assembled in one last night of frantic decorating. 

* * *

_One week until Christmas_

Ingrid looked doubtfully at the huge pile of decorations in the basement. “I think you might have been a little… over-ambitious.” 

There were, admittedly, a lot of decorations. But Felix’s decorating ambitions were too subdued, if anything, not enough to simultaneously fulfill all of Sylvain’s Christmas-decoration dreams, snag the _most Christmas spirit_ prize, and infuriate the HOA. 

“It is a lot,” Annette said, echoing Ingrid’s doubt but rallying at once. “But we there’s no reason we can’t set this all up! We can do this.” 

“I appreciate it.” Felix grabbed his folder of decorating spreadsheets, carefully organized and printed out for the occasion. “We should start with the decorations near the house and work from there. Grab the candy canes.” 

“Well, I suppose we did agree to this.” Ingrid grabbed an armful of giant, light-strewn candy canes. Annette followed suit with even more, balanced precariously as she carried them up the stairs. 

They headed out into the snow-frosted front yard. Sylvain was already reclining in his adirondack chair like it wasn’t the middle of December and he wasn’t wrapped in three layers of sweaters.

“Why aren’t _you_ helping with this?” Annette demanded.

Sylvain waved without getting up. “Annette, Ingrid! So glad you could make it. I’m not helping because Felix insists this is his project. He says I’m not allowed to do any of the heavy lifting.” 

“That isn’t what I said.” Felix had said he didn’t need Sylvain’s help, that he was committed to providing the tackiest Christmas decorations ever. There was a difference. 

“In any case, I’m your stunningly handsome moral support. And I’m keeping the cider warm.” Sylvain sipped his own mug of cider, which had an infuriating little paper umbrella in it, like he was on some beach drinking a margarita. 

Felix scoffed. The pot of cider resting on the table by Sylvain’s chair would stay warm on it’s own. “In any case, he isn’t helping.” 

With all the help, the basement cleared faster than expected. In deference to Ingrid and Annette’s help, Felix stifled his _I told you so’s._ Hour by hour the yard filled with an overabundance of Christmas, starting with the light-up candycanes ringing the house and extending down the front path. The candycanes framed the reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh into the sky, lifting barely high enough to clear the little gingerbread men holding hands at the of the driveway. 

The gingerbread men held hands with the angels, who framed a path to the forest of giant, luminous gumdrops and lollipops. Sugarplum fairies frolicked between the gumdrops and fanned out in a ring around the twelve neon Christmas trees surrounding a ten-foot-tall Frosty the Snowman, who waved his light-up arms in slow motion. 

“Now _this_ is Christmas,” Sylvain said, waving his fourth cup of cider and grinning at the lifesized Santa’s workshop with animatronic elves. “This is what it’s all about.” 

“Glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Felix said as he secured the canopy of blinking lights above the gumdrop forest. “Really.” He caught Sylvain’s eye from across the yard. “There’s no point if you don’t like all of this.” 

“Trust me,” Sylvain said. “Watching you guys do all this? It’s already the best Christmas I’ve ever had.” 

* * *

Cars lined the block for the grand opening of the neighborhood light show. People leaned out their windows, oohing and ahhing at lights all throughout the neighborhood, but Felix and Sylvain’s house was, well, stopping traffic. 

Felix planted himself in a lawn chair next to Sylvain, in the middle of their driveway, with the sugarplum fairies frolicking around a gumdrop forest to their right and Santa’s reindeer riding out to their left. Watching the people throng, get out of their cars for photo-ops with the eight-foot-tall gingerbread man in his ring of neon Christmas trees, his heart felt full of peace. 

“This is the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Sylvain said. “I can’t believe you actually made the worst Christmas lights in the county.” He seemed pretty satisfied, sipping his hot chocolate with a carefree grin, wearing his santa hat at what he probably thought was a roguishly attractive angle. 

Felix grunted. He took a sip of his own hot chocolate. “Don’t act so smug. It isn’t over until the HOA says whatever they’re going to say.” 

“Nah, I’m gonna keep being smug. You already won best Christmas decorations in my heart, babe.” 

“What does that even mean? That’s nothing.” 

The panel of HOA judges approached before Sylvain could argue. Lorenz’s mouth was pressed in a thin, tight line, one shade away from seasonally-inappropriate disapproval. Felix quelled the sudden urge to laugh. 

“I see you’ve expanded your… festiveness.” Behind Lorenz, the other board members took notes; their expressions ranged from open delight to positively scandalized. 

The local reporter, by contrast, was laughing openly, twirling among the dancing angels and snapping picture after picture of every Christmas feature in their overcrowded yard. “You must have had so much fun with this,” she said. “Now come on you two, get up. This is absolutely going in the Christmas lights feature if I have anything to say about it.” 

“So what do you think? Some Christmas spirit, huh?” Sylvain said to Lorenz. “Here, let me get you some cider, we really have to thank you for enabling all this. Don’t worry, it’s all non-alcoholic.” 

Felix leaned up against Sylvain’s side. His many fantasies of judging day had nothing on the real thing, on watching Lorenz struggle to keep his polite smile pasted on as he took in the lights, the figures, the reporter going on and on about their inspired display, and how lovely their picture would look on the front page. 

Acting was not his forte, but Felix thought he did a good job keeping a straight face as he nodded at Lorenz. “I wouldn’t have thought of joining the lights contest without your encouragement. The neighborhood should thank you.” 

Lorenz struggled. In his eyes, Felix saw the fight between returning politeness with politeness and ripping into them about _subverting the Christmas spirit_ or whatever. Eventually, politeness won. “I cannot express enough my delight that you celebrated with our little community. We all agree, I’m sure, that your presence here enriches us all.” 

“Hey, thanks, buddy! If you like it that much, we’ll have to do even better next year,” Sylvain said.

Watching someone die inside was, Felix thought, just a figure of speech. But the joy drained out of Lorenz's eyes as he muttered a quick “of course. We will have to look forward to it.” 

“Should we feel bad for him?” He asked Sylvain as Lorenz walked on to the next yard.

“Him? Nah. If he’s this distraught over a few lights, that seems like a him problem.” 

“Good.”

* * *

_Christmas Eve_

Even through closed curtains, the lights on their front lawn cast a soft glow throughout their house. Indoors, the decorations were much more subdued: a little Christmas tree (real, because Felix insisted on cutting one down himself every year), stockings for them and Nuisance the cat hung over the mantle (because Sylvain insisted that it wasn’t Christmas without stockings), a few candles flickering on the coffee table. 

The glaring headlights as car after car drive past their house, doing one last round of the Christmas lights display, were less pleasant, but it was worth it. The pained smile on Lorenz's face as he handed them the little plaque for _most Christmas spirit_ and the gift basket with their fondue kit and Olive Garden gift card, that made it worth it. The sneer, finally unsuppressed, as Felix and Sylvain dropped by his house to helpfully drop off the Christmas issue of the local paper, their front yard filled with santas and reindeer and sugarplum fairies in full-color glory on the front page. 

“Sylvain,” Felix said. 

“Yeah, Felix?” Sylvain said, snuggling a little closer on the couch. 

“This was fun. We should decorate again some other year.” Enraging Lorenz was it’s own reward, but so was watching Sylvain grin and bask in the glow of the Christmas lights. 

“We should. We so should. This is the best Christmas I can remember, you know? Between you and the lights and pissing off that prick. But mostly you.” 

Lorenz was pissed off. Lorenz, the head of the HOA, was so pissed off. “We should also consider moving.” 

“ _Oh_ yeah, who knows what that guy’s gonna try to fine us for after all of this. I’m calling a realtor next week.” 

**Author's Note:**

> please understand that Lorenz the awful HOA head comes from a place of love.
> 
> The beautiful art is by [@Zaheelee](https://twitter.com/Zaheelee/status/1338555867852013568)!
> 
> find me [@thecaryatid](https://twitter.com/thecaryatid/status/1338554735595544576)


End file.
